The Writer Bares All

I have found it difficult to know what would be the most suitable first post for this blog. I know what I want to write – but what is the best start?

Like beginning an essay, I have been lost for initial ideas. I decided I'd start where an English teacher of mine once advised quite shrewdly: from the beginning.

The title of my blog is, quite obviously, 'Just A Writer'.

It's simple, yes. It took much thinking over, however. People who know me, and those who may begin to through my posts, become aware I'm as indecisive as they come. I'm a Pisces, need I say more?

(You'll also learn how besotted with astrology I am. The people who know me probably wish I didn't use it to analyse so much... Oh well.)

At 2 AM, buzzed from my second energy drink and channelling my distant, inner-computer whiz as I created this blog, it came to me.

I didn't know what to call myself. I mean, what truly am I? 18-year-old journalism student who's always late and terribly selfish. Doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?

This has led me to think about, am I truly what one would call a writer? I haven't published any articles, I'm still only studying the profession and I'm far from a J. K. Rowling.

What is a writer?

I am. You are. This is what I have realised, and I do love a revelation of sorts, that writers are people who write. It sounds brain-numbingly simple, I know.

Your latest tweet, dissertation, even a blog post like this very thing. Was it a Donald Trump rant? Probably. Does it count? YES. I can't express it enough.

I've been worrying these last 3 months, in my chaotic beginning to my career as a trainee journalist, how do I become a writer? Am I going to be able to do it? Am I as much of a writer as him? Her?

These are the questions I ask myself as I gawp in the direction of the smartest person in class, who has already published 5 articles to the local paper and uses vocabulary that puts politicians to shame.

As a girl who is training to write for newspapers and magazines nationwide, it is easy to challenge myself with the idea that my training won't be enough. That maybe I won't become a 'real' writer, whatever that is, no matter the degree.

Wrong.

I could be a qualified journalist or I could be the person who prints the pages of the daily newspaper – does it really matter, so long as ideas are being put to paper? Shared to the internet? Written in sentences, ballads, or lyrics?

I've realised this evening, when re-visiting my post-less blog that I named it what I did for a reason. Because I knew from the moment I stepped into infant school and adored story writing, and even more so when I passed my English A Level with an A grade, that I loved to write.

I've never been published. Neither have many talented writers, I'm sure. But we exist.

There is passion, ideas and creative minds forming sentences all over the world, just like me or even possibly you. We are writers. We are writers because we do it and we want to. We write.

And so here I am, re-inspired. I'm going to write here, on this blog I neglected sleep for days to create, because I want to write. I may not be perfect at it (I certainly am not), and 3 months into my degree it's fair to say I am not the journalist I aspire to be yet.

But I've decided, I don't care much. I'm going to write anyway, or more so ramble, and continue to learn.

After all, as Sylvia Plath said:

“Everything in life is writeable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

x KM

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