When Are You a Writer?

Dan O'Brien

You become a writer when you begin to write. It isn't much different, in that respect, from becoming a bowler. "I am a bowler." No one would question you if you said that. They wouldn't ask if you'd ever bowled a three hundred game or gotten the seven-ten split. They'd just nod. You're a bowler, they would think. And that would be the end of it. There are no tests, no hurdles you have to leap over to become a bowler. The same goes for writing. Pick up a pen or pencil, sit down at a typewriter or word processor and start to write.

You don't have to bowl that three-hundred game or get that seven-ten split to be a bowler. You don't have to tell people your score. You don't have to let people watch. You can throw twenty gutter balls every game. You're still a bowler. But, of course, there are very few who would throw a gutter ball every time. No matter who you are, eventually you'd knock a pin down. Maybe you'd do it the first time you tried. Maybe not for ten years of bowling every Tuesday night. But no matter when it happened, you'd be faced with a realization the first time your ball creased a pin and it began to wobble and finally fell. You would have to admit that you were getting better. And suddenly, unless your imagination was completely dead, you'd have some idea what a strike would feel like. That is when you would begin to think that you're onto something pretty special. All because you picked a ball up, sent it down the alley and called yourself a bowler.

Writing is the same. If you keep trying long enough, one day you'll read something that you've written and you'll think, humm, that's nice. Then you'll see that you could do even better. You'll begin to dream of paragraphs that flow smoothly and make sense to anyone who might read them. It will occur to you that a poem could be perfect. That every word could contribute to the whole and that it could say something that can't be said in any other way. But first you have to sit down and write. You may have to sit for a long time. But as soon as you do, you can call yourself a writer

How much time would you spend at a bowling alley before you called yourself a bowler? Don't spend any more time hunched over a word processor or clutching a pencil. You're a writer when you write. It is as simple as that. You are not a writer when you think about the novel you'll write someday. You're not a writer when you talk about being published. You are a writer when you're putting words on paper. Thousands of them. Lots of Tuesday nights. You'll find it feels as good as knocking pins over. And you don't have to be perfect, or let others judge you. Like bowling, you don't even have to let them watch. All you have to do is write.

Some people seem to think that the act of writing has to do with great thoughts, elaborate plans, hidden messages, divine inspiration, and genius. The fact is, writing is work much like any other and because we're human and naturally lazy we can trick ourselves into getting out of it. am as good at getting out of work as the next guy and, at the beginning of my career, managed to keep myself from writing for years. I worried about everything but the writing. And, as a result, didn't sit down to write and so was not really a writer.

As soon as I quit worrying about getting great ideas, publication, what other people thought of me, and getting in the right mood, I started to write. And then a funny thing happened. All the things I'd been worrying about fell into place and I realized that I'd really just been putting off my writing, making up excuses to keep from sitting down and actually writing. We can think of a million things to keep us from our work, but no matter what we do or what we tell ourselves, we are not writers
until we write. Only by actually putting one word after the other on a piece of paper can we earn the right to be called writers. And when we do put one word after the other on that piece of paper, no one can deny that right.