To make a living by writing is not to live for writing
This apparent tongue-twister is a truth, although it is a hard one.
Like this child sometimes it happens that we look at the horizon without knowing where we are going, what we will do, everything looks like a big question mark. Am I on the right path? Have I taken the right direction? What if I have deluded myself and what I believed to be talent is simply a thing I can do like a lot of other people?
Panic. Fear. Insecurity. Low self-esteem. It happens, though, if not to every one of us, to a big lot.
To cope with these difficult moments is hard, but we can do it. I take these circumstances as signals that I have to look inside of me and see what I want, what I am like. Moreover, I ought to do this exploration with the greatest honesty. It does not immediately solve the tough occurrence, it sometimes takes a long time, but if you proceed in this way, you will always harvest good fruits.
First I speak to myself and do my best to convince my self-esteem to be positive: “think of all the things you did”, I tell it, “of all the targets you hit, appreciate them and use them to go farther and farther”. It is crucial to recognize to ourselves that we have had a positive life, a really positive one. Our self feels stronger, more determined, even livelier.
Seeing is believing. We need an insightful self because on this very self we have to build our expectations, to establish our goals, to prioritize our assets. If our self vacillates, or feels insecure, or still does not understand what there is behind the horizon, we have few possibilities to grow, to see things with more clarity of mind, even to manage our life properly.
Once self-esteem is well, it is time we questioned ourselves about our true being. No lies, no attempts to escape, but straight to the central point. It is implied that we should be prepared for everything we will discover, and should not be afraid of whatsoever discovery we will make.
According to my experience, the discovery is never too far from what we have always believed we are like. I think this proceeding is a kind of test to measure how powerful our willingness is, whether it can pursue our aims. The questions you should ask are simple: what do you want? where are you going? What do you think you are in five years? Usually it seems that you already knew the answers, but again and again, you have to question because again and again, you want to check if you can answer. It is like a lie-detector.
At this point, by and large, you feel stalwart enough to set the steps to reach your goals. I have been saying since I was a child that I would have written, I used to claim I would be a journalist working in Australia. Now, if it is now clear that “Australia” meant: far from where I was, being a journalist can read as a minor achievement in comparison to being a writer, an assertion told in a superstitious manner by a person who lacked enough strength to declare: I will be a writer. It is not a matter of underrating journalists, my God, not at all! I want to say that for me it was too big a statement “I will be a writer”, so I settled for a profession I considered not as sublime as being a writer.
This is another danger that can occlude our path to reach the status of the writer: as to me, I saw writers as semi-gods, far from reality, people who lived only of art and beauty. The facts are different, a writer is a worker who drudges hard, and copes with the harshest reality every day. Yet, then I was a baby.
But of my idealism, I have retained something that I value a lot still today. You do things not because you can do what you want, but because you feel you are in those things you do. They are manifestations of your self, your soul, your karma, call it as you like. At least, this is what I think about the difference between “being” and “doing”.
Therefore I have concluded that my truth, the truth of everyone who feels so strong a drive to write, like you, is “being” a writer, not “doing” the writer. This is a very hard target because it entails that your life depends on what you do and vice-versa. You find yourself in front of difficult choices that can be settled only by yourself, you will go where you and only you will show, you will write what and when you and only you decide, and you won’t write when your self does not feel like.
There are no schedules a priori, but exclusively a posteriori, when everything is decided and done. As every person is different, so every writer is dissimilar. There are no general rules, but uniquely personal and precise rules (if rules there must be).
Surely, aspiring to confrontation, listen to pieces of advice, measure oneself with what others have already experienced is an extraordinarily good thing, but ultimately it will be you that put the “full stop”.
As a consequence, I may say that making a living as a writer is not the same as being a writer. Truly, the opposite must be said: being a writer implies to earn a living by writing. The process cannot be reversible. The reverse is a source of anguish, to me without any doubt. This quotation from Sylvia Plath well expresses my idea:
Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences.
Maybe it is true what another great artist said, the German Thomas Mann, that a writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than for other people. We should be proud of our talent, but also accept it as it is, as difficult as it is, as existential as it is.
