Penny Post #1: The Perils of Authorship
Am I a writer?
The first time someone called me a “writer,” I didn’t dare believe it.
It felt like a too-tight pair of jeans or walking into a room where you don’t know a single soul or getting into a cold shower. Places where I don’t belong: tight fabric, a room with only strangers, and covered in shivers and droplets of cold, cold water. It felt wrong in the way that things feel wrong when they are so close, but not quite there.
I’m not quite a writer.
My writing is not quite ready for viewership.
That word does not quite fit.
Not quite: what an unsettling phrase.
I had never previously identified myself as a writer and for someone else to recognize it when I was unprepared and certainly unwilling to receive it was jarring. It strayed from all I had known myself to be yet simultaneously activated a tiny voice deep down that thought it might be true.
I pride myself on self-awareness. Knowing myself well enough to know who I am, what is on my mind, and what it is I love. Aristotle says: “Knowing ourselves is the beginning of all wisdom”. I know myself, and therefore I have access to an otherwise untouched vault of wisdom.
But I had not quite known myself.
Someone thought of me as a writer. Did this make me one? What is a writer? Who is a writer? Because if a writer is defined by her audience then by definition, I was a writer. A writer with an audience of one, but a writer no less.
I used to think I was a person who liked to write.
Maybe I was a human or a daughter or a sister or a friend or a student or a podcaster or a blogger who liked to write.
But to be a writer, nothing more, nothing less? It felt like uncharted territory. I felt like Leslie Burke from The Bridge to Terabithia, gripping the too-thick rope with slippery hands, terrified of drowning in the river below.
Sometimes the ones closest to you know you before you know yourself. This was something I didn’t already know about myself, and although it was scary and unfamiliar and unsettling, it was also warm and comforting and invigorating.
I am a writer. I squint my eyes even writing that line: it feels too decisive and unrelenting. Writing has certainly gripped me tight, but the question remained if I would be ready to grip it back.
In my limited experience, writing is unique like that. It is a tight, forced hug. For me, writing initiated the hug, pulling me in close. It was the kind of hug that knocks the wind out of you, making you gasp for air. You could try to force yourself from the hug, and pull back against the arms that are surprisingly strong. But the arms only tighten their grip as you try to escape. The only thing you can do is hug back.
When I was first called a writer, I didn’t want to hug back.
I think I might finally be ready for that hug. *Inhales a great gulp of breath*
Tucked in the warm, tight embrace of a hug,
I’m Kiera and I’m a writer.
Questions I leave you with:
What are you not quite ready for?
Where does not quite live for you?
How does not quite become enough?