Am I... A Writer?

My perfectionism and self-doubt would not agree

Photo by Hannah Murrell on Unsplash

I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words already, but somehow I still don't feel worthy of the label.

What else does it take then?

There is no clear definition, no line you cross to know you've become a writer. 

My perfectionistic, high-expectations brain will probably allow me to call myself a writer only once I hold a book with my name on it. It will be finally content then, right?

Yet this will be, of course, short-lived.

Afterwards, it would very quickly slip to “Ah but ok, one book is no big deal. It has to be a bestseller, but what's truly best, is 10 bestsellers.”

Will it relax then?

Maybe, possibly.

But it’s not like I want to wait until then to find out. Pressuring myself into perfectionism’s made-up metrics of success makes me, ahem, not like writing.

I don’t believe I can hate writing, but what I know for certain is I can avoid it like the plague and it can feel like medieval torture when my exceptionally high standards are lurking in the background.

And in these times, I think perfectionism is right.

I am not a writer.

Simply because I’m not writing. I’m too afraid I will never reach these faraway goals, or worse, I will fail to reach them, and then I will have to carry the life-long label of failure.

It is a too painful scenario to imagine, who would want to do something that will turn them into a failure?

And in moments when I’d buy all of that nonsense, I could feel the writer in me walking away.

I was stuck in this painful limbo of either being a failure or betraying myself by keeping my words locked. By saying, “Yeah, I used to write quite a bit, but not really nowadays.”

I used to be a writer.

I know you can be jealous of other writers, but imagine being jealous of your past self. Of the moments when you didn’t let the fear rule. Of these moments when you could write so, so well.

And here’s the thing - in writing, as in pretty much anything else, we become better with practice. The first thing we wrote might be crap, but who cares?

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“Don’t be afraid to write crap – it makes the best fertilizer. The more you write the better your chances of growing something wonderful.” — Pat Pattison

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The more we write, the more we get tuned into the writer within. We have more and better ideas, we have more inspiration.

And more energy, because we are finally letting ourselves do something we love, instead of being paralysed by fear.

And most importantly, we let ourselves do it because we love it, not because we are looking to gain something from it.

So, maybe, possibly, since I wrote today, yesterday, and the day before -

I am a writer.

But even if I didn't, even if this was my first-ever sentence, why could I not call myself a writer?

If writing is my calling?

And writing, at the end of the day, is about words, not about numbers.

It’s not about how many words you’ve written or how many people have read them. It’s about having put those words down, and continuing to do so, and especially when self-doubt strikes.

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“You are a writer and the world needs your medicine.” — Beth Kempton

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This beautiful quote by

Beth Kempton

always fires me up and makes me believe. It makes me feel it in my bones that yes, I am a writer, and yes, it is worth sharing my words.

Even though at times it might feel like we are screaming into the void, we all have at least one lifetime reader secured. And deep down, we are truly writing all those things for them.

Yes, it is ourselves, and yes, let’s not disappoint ourselves.

I may not be many of the adjectives like bestselling, famous, award-winning, etc.

But a writer, I am.